Twist of Fate
by Louise24601
Summary: 'You ever think, in another life...' In an alternate universe in which Sara is still struggling with drug use and Michael winds up working for her father, they seem to have very little in common and no reason to fall in love. However, as they get stuck in an elevator, Sara finds that may not be enough to stop them. Warnings: swearing, mention of drug use and sexual situations.
1. Chapter 1

1

Sara cast just one brief look at the man standing next to her as she stepped inside the elevator.

Tall –

(_She liked them tall_)

– black stubble growing back on his shaven scalp, a wine-red shirt, and an indistinct flash of an apparently handsome face. So handsome, actually, that Sara didn't want to look twice and have to realize the stranger wasn't actually that good-looking. Sure enough, she thought, there'd be old-acne scars on his face, or just a global disharmony her eyes hadn't caught in this brief, englobing glance.

Sara had more preoccupying thoughts to concern herself with, anyway –

She and the man were alone in the elevator, which in and of itself was rare enough.

It was five thirty p.m., a busy hour, and usually people flocked towards the elevator like bees diving in on a honeypot. It wasn't _such_ a big building, and yet, Sara thought, the staircase was regarded with some sort of suspicion, and she doubted anyone would want to use it unless there were a fire or something.

Ha.

(This was amusing to Sara's shaken, sleep-deprived brain).

But staircases are so much more reliable than elevators. Staircases don't drop a dozen stories, while you're trapped in a box and waiting to crash –

Sara reached for the smooth, maroon surface of the elevator when she lost her balance. In response, she felt the man shift on his feet, hands leaving his pockets.

_What does he think?_ She wondered, her lips ready to smile with such a golden occasion for sarcasm. _That he'll get to gallantly catch me as I stumble, as if the very sight of him knocked me off my feet?_

Sara straightened up, and leant her shoulder against the wall, near the line of buttons that went from Ground Floor to 9.

In her normal state, Sara could have walked these floors, used to be a promising runner in high school, could sprint across the football field without hardly breaking a sweat.

But this had been forsaken when she took up medical school, of course.

And morphine.

Morphine above all had killed Sara's athletic career.

In the corner of her eye, Sara could see the man, standing erect, a few feet from her – a blurred outline of the elegant face, which a full appraisal would probably reveal full of imperfections.

Naturally, they hadn't spoken a word to each other.

Maybe, as she joined him in the elevator, he had muttered a vague, polite greeting, no outright _Hello_, but those indistinguishable whispers we usually manage in a stranger's presence – _good day, how are you, hi there._ The words were a shy, barely audible whisper, unintelligible enough that you could take your pick as to what formula you'd just been served.

Sara's eyes darted towards the numbers on small screen, by the automatic doors.

Eight, seven, six.

Each floor was maybe fifteen seconds. When they'd reached number four, the man next to Sara cleared his throat.

Sara shot him a sharp and suspicious glance. She'd read about women being assaulted in elevators.

Even the quiet (and quieting) smile on the young man's lips didn't quite lower Sara's fences.

"Hi."

He said this not as if he'd been planning to approach her but just because their eyes had crossed and it would be rude not to. Still, he did sound awfully confident – and, Sara was half-displeased to acknowledge, he looked every bit as handsome as her mind had registered at first glance.

"Oddly quiet, isn't it? The elevator's usually crowded at this time of day." He remarked, managing a simultaneous smile and sigh, and both looked unreasonably attractive.

Sara was briefly reminded of the sort of men she used to date – or dream of – before morphine. Witty. Intelligent. Actually handsome.

How had she gotten so used to lazy leers, clumsy pawing and drunk kisses?

Drugs and booze, in Sara's experience, was more likely to make men slow – as if climbing on top of her amounted to scaling the Everest. How they beamed at her afterwards, in bliss and exhaustion, expecting her to share their amazement, or like she maybe ought to break into applause so they could fall peacefully asleep, their ego properly pampered.

It was strange that she hadn't noticed how much this annoyed her, until that single smile from the blue-eyed stranger in the elevator (what else was she supposed to call him?).

But Sara's brain was too fast, too passionate, even for morphine to tone her down. If drugs weren't taking the wild out of her, she didn't see what would – and she especially didn't see what she was doing, thinking about sex, while the young man was still staring into her eyes.

(_Is this one wild, behind that polished smile of his?_)

"Do you work here?" Michael inquired, maybe because she still hadn't answered his first question, though he managed not to sound desperate or defeated. "I don't think I've ever seen you in the building."

"My father owns it."

"Oh –"

"He's a piece of shit."

In truth, she only said that to see how funny he'd look, thrown off in his game – she expected maybe he'd just stare blankly at her, trying to convince himself he hadn't heard her right, because certainly a girl in such a fancy dress and high heels wasn't capable of such unwomanly speech.

And what the hell? She thought. She'd never talk to him again. After those automatic doors had returned her to the real world, Sara would walk out with her head held high, and the (admittedly handsome) stranger would be obliterated from her mind.

But the young man didn't actually make any funny face at all – just a flicker of surprise in his blue eyes, and the smile sitting on his face maybe turned wider, without crossing the precious limits of politeness.

Maybe because it wasn't something he heard every day, what with his neat clothes and sociable manners.

Maybe it was just that the swearing somehow didn't make her inelegant – like sophistication was just a second skin she'd never manage to tear off.

_Talk about being born with a silver spoon in your mouth_.

_Disappointing_, Sara thought, before straightening her hand on the strap of her purse, and looking back ahead of her – finally, they were reaching the ground floor, and she wouldn't cast one last look at the man. Better to leave him to ponder that.

He looked like the kind who liked to make sense of things (_to solve puzzles_).

But just as the elevator had passed the first storey, there was a vague quivering in the elevator cage, a sort of hiccups – the image seemed so fit Sara had trouble shaking it off. Like she and the stranger were trapped in the mouth of a hiccoughing elevator cage that might or might not spit them out.

After a few seconds during which Sara's stomach was curled into a tight ball, her heart squeezed by an anxious invisible hand, the elevator continued its laborious course, until it came to an abrupt stop. Just like that.

Sara stupidly reached for the Ground Floor button and pressed it, eagerly, almost hysterically (that's what her father would have called it, what he typically called her anger for him – _Now, please, dear. Let's not be hysterical_)

The elevator remained stuck however many times the button was pressed, and Sara retreated without looking ridiculous or defeated, taking a few steps back, sucking in her bottom lip and trapping it between her teeth.

In the corner of her eye, she could see the tall blue-eyed stranger looking at her.

So much for disappearing out those automatic doors and never talking to him again, she thought.

So much for getting the last word.

2

The two prisoners in the elevator cage tried everything in the book. Nothing extraordinarily imaginative or smart – just pure common sense. Pressing the emergency call button. Waiting as their problem was being taken to the right people. All of it felt to Sara like they were taking each other through the kiddy steps before a big slide – when they had exhausted all of the measures that were in order, all the things they _could_ do, then it would just be the two of them and the void of silence, the air would thicken, Sara's pulse would race –

(_As it does when you're attracted to someone_)

And come on. How long had it been since Sara had found anyone really attractive, since sex had been even remotely connected to finding a pleasant partner, rather than just using it the same way she used morphine and booze – something to channel the exhausting (and terrifying) force in her mind.

_I'm trying to wear myself out_, Sara realized, and found the idea somewhat amusing.

"I'm Michael, by the way. Scofield."

Sara's eyes shot towards the stranger, as if he'd not just introduced himself but produced a loaded pistol and aimed its barrel at her head.

The young man – _Michael_ – shrugged his shoulders, not exactly in coyness. "These things can take a while," he said. "Might be best if we have something to call each other."

"Yeah." Sara said, without it sounding like she agreed. An actual touch of suspicion – _What do you know, how long these things can take?_ As if he'd actually planned all of this, getting stuck in an elevator with a mystery woman with whom he'd exchanged a total of, what, ten words?

The silliness of it must have spread from her mind to his because, without breaking eye-contact with her, he started chuckling.

Confident, but not so that it didn't leave place for warmth and sincerity. You could tell, in his laughter alone, that the man was a stranger to lying – Sara had known enough liars to be able to tell.

"I mean, I'm no technician, but –"

"Then what are you?"

The smile on his lips looked sweet, _rich_, you'd imagine they'd taste of dark chocolate. It crossed Sara's mind she'd never mused over what a man's lips might taste like before.

"I'm an engineer."

"Oh."

"Yes. Actually, this company hired me because they're thinking of building another seat."

"I've caught wind of it," Sara lied for some reason.

"They're quite a success," Michael commented. It wasn't clear whether or not he'd bought it. "My brother says, pretty soon, there'll be 'Tancredi and Associates' building in every big city."

"Sounds like your brother isn't too pleased about it."

Michael shrugged. "He's old fashioned. Thinks big corporations are essentially evil."

"A shame he isn't stuck with me in this elevator."

"So, when you say your father owns this building…"

Their eyes were held by an invisible line, straight, unwavering. Sara was aware, in some deeply buried secret place she hadn't needed for years, that they were flirting. What's more, they were going about it like children in kindergarten. Throwing jabs at each other, no time for pause or weakness. In a more or less obvious way, pulling on each other's pigtails.

Sara could almost find it amusing, if not for the extremely _adult_ feel of the air between them.

"You don't mean Frank Tancredi, do you?" Michael finished with his question.

There was no escape door for Sara to seize, no way to deny a piece of information she'd willingly given away.

But as she reckoned the young man had asked without a remote doubt concerning the answer, she didn't bother to give one. "You've had the pleasure to meet him in person?"

"I wouldn't call it pleasure." Cocking his head to the side, and Sara glimpsed a beauty spot on his temple, couldn't help but think – _this must be the sort of details this man needs to remind others his absurd good looks aren't dehumanizing_. "It's business."

"Business," she repeated, inexplicably amused.

Michael did have that knowing air about him, like he was the sort of man who'd sell his soul to the devil – if the devil had something well worth trading.

"That reminds me," he remarked, "you haven't told me what you're doing here."

In other words, why would she be visiting her father if he was such 'a piece of shit'?

When you thought about it, Sara's relationship with Frank Tancredi was pretty much business itself. They met on an irregular basis, sometimes as much as twice a year, though never for the holidays – Sara couldn't conjure up an image more ridiculous than she and her father, sitting at a table loaded with turkey and yams and sophisticated-looking desserts, awkwardly trying to get through more than a few words.

Things as they were suited Sara just fine.

Usually, it would go more or less like this –

She got in trouble, and he threatened her with rehab. Or prison. Or both.

More often than not, he'd be using his big CEO voice for this, and Sara could imagine how his employees cowered in front of his majestic authority, must be, considering how Frank Tancredi looked an absolute stranger to anything short of meek obedience.

Sara would actually almost enjoy this – those brief reunions with her father.

_How much was it this time, Sara? For Christ's sake_, she would smile like a hell-spawned cat when he said that, as if Frank expected for her to blush repentantly at the sound of Jesus's name, _you have more shit coursing through your veins right now than a bloody sewage system_.

All the while, Sara would smile contentedly, if anything, with secret mockery –

_Oh yes, father, go ahead, wash my sins away with your purifying speech. Can you feel the shame, ladies and gentlemen? Oh, bless you, father. Obliterate me! Oh, the sweet taste of penitence, atone me, whip me bloody with those saintly hands, oh –_

Sara's lips broke into a red, chiming laughter.

Yes, she did enjoy playing a joke on her father, every once in a while, which she took it wasn't totally undeserved. After all, he only kept her out of prison because he couldn't afford a scandal.

And it was awfully easy to keep being a rock in his shoe when that's all he'd ever seemed to think she could _do_.

A shine of curiosity swept over Michael's eyes. Her laughter, maybe – or the wickedness in her smile.

_Does he buy it? Does he think I look like a witch (does he feel spellbound)?_

"Trust me, Michael," she said, to put him out of his misery. It was starting to get hot, in that elevator cage, and Sara found it wiser not to try and see where the smoke might lead them. "You don't want to hear about this."

"About –"

"Me." She cut off – but couldn't quite will the smile off her lips, however hooked on it he looked. "If you're working with my father, it's best you forget I exist."

"You don't get along, I take it."

For a smart man, he did ask extraordinarily easy questions. But what would be the point in saying so, in teasing him some more?

_I've gone too far down that road to go back, now_. Clever handsome men belonged in an alternate life in which Sara wouldn't have chosen morphine – sweet, welcome oblivion – a life where there'd be room for conversations, _seduction_, possibly passion.

"Like I said," Sara answered, somewhat cautious, despite the vixen gleam in her eyes. "You don't want to follow my example."

A voice, having an odd metallic sound to it, sounded in the elevator cage, muffled but communicating a simple enough message that it could get through.

'They' were very sorry for this incident. The problem of the stuck elevator had been brought to 'their' superior and 'they' would take care of it as quick as possible. It shouldn't be longer than –

"A few minutes," Sara repeated to herself, amused. Right. Liars know a lie when they come across one.

All the while, she was deliberately avoiding to look at Michael, thinking _he_ ought to stop looking at her like that, like she was some sort of mystery (_he looks like a man who likes solving puzzle_), a question mark that makes sense neither by the answers it suggests nor even by the questions it raises.

"So," Michael resumed, calm, still confident (she ate confident men like him for breakfast). "I believe you were telling me about yourself."

"You _believe_ that? Well. We won't be stuck in here much longer." It was lame to go for the _it's a long story_ formula, but Sara found that under those unsettling blue eyes, she was out of ideas.

Michael shrugged, unshaken in his poise. "You could give me your phone number, and we could finish this over a drink sometime."

Sara's laughter came out more _witch_ than she meant it. "Really, Michael," she assured. "You don't want to go down that road."

Better for them to leave it there – for him to think she was a fascinating riddle rather than one messed up woman.

"This is going to sound funny to you," he said, serious, "but I really think I do."

The smile on Sara's lips didn't go anywhere, but she had to struggle to keep it there. This didn't sound _funny_ to her at all.

There was something about Michael the blue-eyed stranger, and it wasn't just that pretty face her eyes couldn't seem to get used to –

The charm, the odd warmth and quiet he radiated. And the way he meant to seduce her, no games, no wheedling – just a sure and steady hand.

Sara's hand used to be steady, holding a scalpel, saving lives, mattering. Before morphine.

_You should have met me in another life, Michael Scofield_.

At last, the elevator cage loosened with an abrupt quaking and resumed its downward course.

Sara's eyes kept wisely ahead of her, although she could feel his (that abyss-blue gaze) burning a red mark on the side of her face.

"No phone number, then?"

No desperate hope or neediness. Really, she had a sudden image of Michael as just a gallant stranger, holding the door open for her –

Some doors aren't safe to enter.

And when you've already gone so far down a path of self-destruction, it's people who try to save you that look dangerous. People who hold out their hands (_sure and steady_), to try and get you out of those tumultuous waters you're in –

(_Oh, but those waters get so familiar after a while, numb and comfortable_)

"I better not." Sara answered, with an attempt at firmness – she was dismayed to hear the tremor in her voice. Her eyes, tempted to meet his –

"Fair enough." He yielded – no defeat. Not exactly surrender. "Then, may I at least get a name?"

A somewhat ridiculous _ding_, as the automatic doors parted on a sudden glimpse of daylit hall, and Sara willed herself to walk away, just like this, no more words.

Her heel-clad feet turned lead-heavy, rooted into the ground.

"Shouldn't be hard for you to find it," she said. The sound of her own voice somewhat distant. "Frank Tancredi's a famous enough man – like all very successful corporate heads. And I'm the only daughter he has, as far as I know."

The sound of Michael's laughter drew Sara's eyes on his face before she could help it. "You don't like easy, do you?"

"It depends with whom."

Then her eyes were ahead of her again, but not fast enough that she could miss the shine of curiosity in his gaze, or before the sight of his white grin could wring silly flutters from her stomach.

_Like a little girl, Sara_.

_Loves-me-loves-me-not-loves-me-loves-me-not_.

"Goodbye, then."

"I'll see you," was his answer.

And finally Sara could break whatever spell was keeping her feet frozen and she was walking away, fast – almost like her life depended on it.

_Now_, she could say it. "I'll never see that man again." A hushed whisper, meant only for herself.

But that was without taking into account that fate might have other plans for them.

…

**End Notes**: I intended to write this as a one-shot but I've had a lot of fun with it, and now I'm thinking a series of chance encounters between these two might be interesting enough. Give me your thoughts! Hope you've enjoyed this.


	2. Drunk Out Of A Bar

The cocktails had been the real mistake.

Sara could handle shots – vodka, rum, tequila – had bested many a contester sometimes twice her weight, always considered it a pleasant (if a little bitter) personal victory when she could make it through the night in a better state than whoever had been her date for the evening.

(There's easy and then there's _easy_)

Maybe it was vain to try and make a difference, but Sara had been swimming these waters too long not to know how things worked. When you looked drunker than your partner, and you were a woman, you opened the door wide for the man to act like he'd played some game (the old-as-time game of lady-hunting in bars?) and won.

Everyone had pet peeves, and this wasn't a particularly embarrassing one to Sara's mind.

People could say and think of her what they wished.

It hadn't mattered since her sophomore year of high school, when Gretchen Morgan had sprayed the bright red-paint letters WHORE on her shirt after gym.

Heap the dirty names of bitch and slut on her shameless doorstep. Sara wore them with pride and defiance and (most often) a grin.

The only thing that _irked_ her, that could get on her nerves for real, was when men made her out to be some sort of _victory_. Like they'd been in control, like she hadn't taken them home – or to some nearer half-appropriate setting – of her own will.

So, it was a matter of principle that she should hold her own when she was out partying.

It was the cocktails' fault that tonight went out of tracks. Cocktails, all innocent-looking and sweet-tasting, peach syrup or coconutty pineapple blurring her alarm signals – that was it for her. Oh, Sara hadn't _bought_ a cocktail in years, but now – bare knees turning raw against the slimy bathroom tiling, the sound of her throwing up not quite covering the copulating couple in the next booth – now, Sara reckoned she was also past accepting them for free, be they offered to her by strangers who would look passably cute even without a drink.

"A'right," she muttered, flushed with one hand then leant against the slightly sticky wall of the booth, and pressed her forehead to her knees for a second. In these moments, she found talking to herself was the likeliest thing to put her back together. "Failure happens to the best of us."

The couple next door moaned their complete agreement.

"You call it a night." Sara went on. "Get a ride home. Sleep for nine hours."

The plan sounded good when she heard it out loud. If she remembered to take off her heels and tiptoe her way to her apartment, there'd be no witness to her embarrassing inebriety at all, save possibly the neighbor's cat, who she sometimes found wandering in the halls.

"So, we'll both be caught doing things we shouldn't be. Won't tell on him if he won't."

With a long sigh, Sara heaved herself into a standing position and stumbled out of the booth, not bothering to so much as glance at the bathroom mirror for damage-control. Tonight was past saving, anyway.

In the bar, one of her least-favorite 80s love song was playing, loud, not even the original but a bad cover that had not even the advantage of nostalgia.

_'__Ooh in my life, there's been heartache and pain_…'

Presently, Sara couldn't think of much past her own _head_ache, blurring even the remainders of nausea and the bilious taste in her mouth.

She walked out of the bar like a professional, eyes down, her purse pressed to the side of her face, determined not to stop if the cocktail-luring stranger called out her name.

The night air outside was uncomfortably cold but an immediate relief, even as her bare arms broke into gooseflesh. Sara was vaguely aware she'd been wearing a shawl, earlier in the evening, but was past wondering where she'd left it or why it mattered.

The parking lot before the bar was neither deserted nor disproportionately shady. No drunk kid puking all over his Nikes, no creep waiting to cup a woman's breasts or ass. Around, Sara could hear the music playing from inside the bar, a couple of groups chatting, no inebriated slurring but casual, articulated talk.

A blush crimsoned her cheeks. It might have been the cold.

(_except it wasn't_)

Well, Sara said to herself, you can't win them all.

She could be in control next time. Yes, and she never had to see any of those people again –

"Careful."

Sara had little time to heed the warning, much less to identify its source, before the world swept from beneath her feet, as if she'd taken a step into space.

The damned _step_.

_For chrissake_.

Right when she'd entered the bar – whenever Sara entered somewhere where she intended to drink in general – she was always careful in analyzing her environment, putting pins on all the things that were likely to turn into vicious traps as her drunkenness advanced. Slippery flooring. Foot-tripping carpets. And sure enough, when she'd arrived here some two hours ago, she'd taken careful note of that step, filled with a superior feeling – _oh, yes, some dumb fool's going to break his neck falling because of that step, sooner or later_.

Such moments leave such short time for a reaction.

In maybe a second and a half, Sara dropped her purse, moved her arms in front of her face as her body swiveled. There was no up or down or left or right, no hope whatsoever of her finding balance, merely of landing in the least painful way as possible.

A ridiculous gasp rounded her lips into an _O_, as Sara felt a man's hand grab her forearm – firm, and too caught up in urgency for gentleness. Though he was strong, he'd reached for her late enough that she nearly drew them both down, and he had to slide another hand around her waist.

It flashed through Sara's head they must looked like a waltzing couple in a music box.

Then, a sillier thought –

_I've never danced with a man._

For a second the world around them was whirling, then Sara breathed in. The subtle aroma of lemony hair-wash, one she remembered filling the closed space of an elevator cabin a long, long time ago –

_No way this is happening. No_ _way_.

Sara looked up just as the man did and their gazes were like two cars at a crossroads, shooting in the same direction –

(Sara actually heard it, in her head, felt the heat spread through her chest)

– _Bang_.

"Are you okay?"

"No."

But she was still thinking _No way_.

She was in no state to determine whether he looked surprised. "Not like this."

"What?"

"I walked out. I won."

Sure enough, it was the same ridiculously handsome face staring back at her – very close to her now, he was still holding her waist – as it had been in that stupid elevator, the stranger she'd met on her way out of her father's building, some six or seven months ago.

Michael Scofield.

The name flared up in her mind, swift as a cut, you know it's going to leave a mark even if you hardly felt the blade sink, you see the blood before you feel any pain.

It wasn't supposed to turn out like this.

Once or twice – well, a whole lot more than that, but there was no mind-police in Sara's brain to call her out on the lie – she'd looked back on the encounter, its strange coat of magic and chance, how it glowed with the charm of all fleeting things.

Sara was actually pleased with how things had ended.

Of course, she would be.

Hadn't she walked out of here holding her head high as a marble statue, tall, invincible, inscrutable_ (he'd asked to see her but she'd given nothing away, not one truth, not even a name_).

Sara _liked_ walking out on people when she held all the cards. Over the past few months, there'd been comfort in the thought that when the stranger – _Michael_ – looked back on their encounter, it was worse for him than for her.

"Did you hurt yourself?"

"I'm okay."

In her mouth, words tasted stale with vomit and booze. Her black dress didn't cover down to her knees, red and raw from the half-hour she'd spent in the bathroom.

That was too unfair, that chance should take back every advantage it'd given her before – that they should meet again _now_, when she hadn't been in such a humiliating state for years.

A thought crossed Sara's mind and she was prompt to crush it dead –

How intolerable it was for the tables to turn on her like this and how, if there was any mercy in fate's plans, they'd _have_ to meet again.

Sara withdrew her arm from his grip. The warmth of his hand on her waist was a little harder to part with – cozy and snug, what a nice hand it must be to fall asleep in…

_Sara you idiot you move away from it right now_.

Michael's direct blue eyes scrutinized her under furrowed browns. Sara took a couple of steps back – careful not to trip on the step he'd been so chivalrous about rescuing her from.

"I'll, uh – I'll go home now."

"I just called a cab," Michael said. "Why don't you take it? I can wait for the next one."

Sara considered this, through the haze of drunkenness. The weakness in her knees suggested it was best to sit down, which she did with care and caution; the ground was cold beneath the material of her light dress but mercifully dry.

"Sure," Sara gathered her knees against her chest, gave off a loud sigh – gave up on pride entirely. "Why not?"

After a moment – only a few seconds to Sara's mind, but she might have passed out – Michael sat down next to her.

"So," Michael started, with no aftertaste of mockery or amusement. "You come here often?"

_Why_, Sara wondered, _would it get him to come back here if I told him I did?_

In truth, it was a really lousy bar. As if to prove her point, the incompetent singer on the CD player inside was still howling about how much he wanted to know what love was.

"If you're trying to determine what the odds were that we'd meet each other here," she said, "I'll save you trouble – they were _slim_."

Sara didn't look up from the ground for a long while, not in shame but in a practiced pose of cynical cool, the sort that looks ridiculous on young adolescents who dye their hair black and smoke cigarettes – but Sara was a natural at making cynicism look well. It was possibly the only thing she was natural at.

How much she'd laughed when her colleagues would say she was a 'born surgeon' – yeah, right. Eight years neck-deep in studies, learning the human anatomy through books and cutting open cadavers, living on coffee and calculated sugar highs, but she qualified as a _born surgeon_.

Sara wasn't of those people who thought you were often born _anything_. Nurture over nature and shit.

But you wouldn't be so wrong to say she was a born cynic.

Then, the blackness of the sidewalk was getting a little too hypnotic for her – she wouldn't want for Michael to have to wake her up when the cab got there – and she looked up.

Because she feared reticence to meet his eyes would be interpreted as embarrassment, she looked at him, and found he was smiling.

"In the elevator, when you wouldn't give me your name, you said I could look you up."

_Ha_.

The small victory of his interest in her put a balm over Sara's disappointment.

(_But it might be the booze; booze made her over-confident_)

"And did you?"

"A little."

Understatement.

"You're pleased about this," she said, "aren't you?"

What with that grin on his face, it would have been hard for him to deny it. "I was open from the first that I wanted to see you again, Sara."

More than that, he was actually acting damn sure that they _would_ meet again.

Their last exchange flashed through her brain –

_'__Goodbye, then.'_

_'__I'll see you.'_

– and Sara would be tempted to think the young man had been stalking her through social networks and staged everything about this unlikely encounter, if there wasn't such a genuineness to both their surprises, something so incredibly authentic about this lucky-unlucky event.

_I'll see you_.

"And now you know my name," she said.

"That upsets you?"

"Don't flatter yourself."

His laughter was cool, pure startle, and – was she getting this right? – a little joy. Great. Now, _she_ was flattering herself.

"Don't act like this."

"Like what?" He said.

"Like this is all so easy too you. Like you're – in control."

"That matters to you, Sara? Control."

Anyone else could have made it sound like an asshole thing to say.

_Fancy man in his fancy clothes, fancily catching me in my fall. Acting like he knows me_.

But that wasn't it at all.

Even drunk, and even disinclined as she was to admit it, Sara heard the utter lack of judgement in his tone. There was an overall gentleness to him he hadn't grown ashamed of, hadn't tried to hide, however many bullies must have hassled him about it. This was indeed an unusual man, who ought to have been broken by today's world, and yet, somehow, didn't even look fragile.

"I know you've thought about me," she said, out of nowhere – where he always seemed to come from, anyway.

"A lot," he admitted.

"Why?"

"I can't say, really. Except that you puzzle me. Yes, that's the word for it," he was chuckling again. "In my mind, you're exactly like a question mark, Sara. Only even the questions you raise don't make sense to me."

They fell into a grave silence. It _was_ grave, despite the loud music playing inside, the indistinguishable chatter that came to their ears.

What Michael had just said to her touched her in a way few other things could have. The way an icy rain soaks all the way to your bones. Some people are born invisible, but Sara had needed to work at it, to grow a skin that was like a reflecting surface, that showed no more of her than a mirror could show itself.

For the first time in years, how strange, how baffling, to be _seen_ – to be looked at.

A sudden, disappointing desire in her took grip of her insides and squeezed all in a tyrant fist. That there would be _more_, that this would go forward, on and on until the want for life in her was resurrected, until she had shed the full of her old flesh and scarred dreams, and she was red and raw as a newborn being.

Heat brightened her cheeks at once – now, indeed, with shame – at the realization that she _wanted_ the things she had herself turned from. That she wanted more from this stranger – maybe as much as he wanted from her. Not only to be seen, but to be touched.

_How foolish_, she thought. _How human_.

The men she took home for the night couldn't touch her – when you've grown cold enough, armored enough, the feel of fingers on your skin is like touching glass. There's nothing in it. No life.

_I've done this to myself_, Sara thought again. _I wanted to disappear_.

And now what?

"Would you find it insulting if I offered to give you my scarf?" Michael asked.

"Have your own way."

What with the booze, she couldn't feel the cold, but she'd rather not wake up feverish tomorrow.

Michael untangled the red scarf from around his neck and handed it to her. She wrapped it around her shoulders like a shawl. The wool was itchy and warm against her skin. It smelled of mystery-man and unexpectedness and fate. And lemony hair-wash.

Michael didn't ask for her phone number again, not for fear of humiliation, or to deny her the pleasantness of regaining power.

But because what he wanted was clear enough. There was no need to reiterate.

The cards were in her hands, which was usually where Sara liked them.

_But now… Oh, now…_

The cab arrived in a steaming flash of yellow, the headlights hitting Sara's vulnerable brain like the rays of the sun, reviving her headache and turning on full volume.

Michael was on his feet in one agile motion, and she accepted the hand he extended without embarrassment.

The walk to the cab was short, might have been tumbling if she hadn't been leaning on Michael's shoulder.

Wasn't it strange she should accept his help, accept that a magical steady hand should just appear out of nowhere when she needed one?

More often than not, help wasn't for free, and sweet strangers who were so willing to lend it did so because they wanted something.

But sometimes you just know something is exactly what you think it is. You _just know_.

"I'd offer to drive you home," Michael said, "but my brother appeared to have ditched me here and taken my car."

"Joke's on you then, isn't it?"

He didn't answer. The joke, of course, was on those who refused to take what they wanted out of pride, who'd prefer black cynicism to happiness – in cynicism, there's no chance of disappointment, no risk of true despair.

"Besides," Michael said. "I have a feeling you wouldn't let me."

He was right about this.

It could have been pouring hellfire and she still wouldn't have let that stranger drive her home.

If they could chance on each other like this just by living in the same city, imagine if he knew where she lived.

Sara knew herself too well, was too aware of her own weaknesses.

If he'd driven her home, and they'd both been sitting still and silent in his car, after the ignition was off, at the door of her building…

She could already hear herself say it.

_I'm on the third floor, first door on the left. I'm going to go clean up and get out of these clothes._

Not outright inviting him to join her. She'd sooner have him ponder on what she meant by volunteering the information – she'd done it before, with many people, people that didn't matter, people that hadn't always waited until she'd disappeared inside the building to hop along.

_It's better like this_, she thought. _No risk. No temptation_.

Michael leaned in to open the backseat door for her – not patronizing but good old-fashioned gallantry, she supposed. He would have done it if she hadn't been drunk.

"Your scarf," Sara thought to point out when she slid inside the car.

"Why don't you keep it?"

Like it made all the sense in the world.

"A'right."

"Take care, Sara."

"Goodnight."

The door slammed and Sara was aware of the streets scrolling through the car window in a blend of darkness and shining billboards, restaurant signs that read _OPEN!_, twenty-four-hour stores, streetlights, and the occasional lamp burning at an office window.

There was a sentence, burning on the tip of Sara's tongue, one of those trite things people said all the time, but she couldn't seem to remember, even as the city of Chicago flashed her by at full speed.

She struggled not to doze off and remembered to tip the cabbie on her way out. Each step she took inside her building seemed to give an echo louder than if she'd been screaming in a megaphone. The elevator in her building was constantly out of order.

"Bloody cocktails," she heard herself mutter once in a while.

Five minutes of delicate clatter as she fumbled to get her keys in the lock.

Each second of it was hateful, of course, pathetic, _cliché_.

Just as she pushed open the door, a loud _miaow _took her by surprise and Sara turned round, only to find the neighbor's cat staring at her from the top of the stairs.

Sara stared back in silence for a moment.

"What the hell."

She let the door ajar and waited for the cat to pad its way to her apartment before she snapped the lock shut. Whether her allowing it to spend the night here should fill her with comfort or self-pity, she was too drunk to decide; she'd give it a shot in the morning.

Sara poured the cat a bowl of milk which it lost interest in after only a few licks. It was skimmed milk, and you could tell this cat was used to richer treats – no scrawny street animal but a definitely chubby and spoiled family pet. Sara's fingers sunk into fur and fat when she picked it up and took it to bed. Better company than she'd had in years.

The animal fell asleep quietly at her feet and, just as her own head hit the pillow, Sara thought of the stranger, and of that line that had been teasing at the edge of her mind, knock-a-knocking at the door of consciousness.

Sara's eyes blinked open wide as the words got through, as if reeling from the strength of a breath-stealing blow.

Michael's scarf was still around her neck, red and warm and reminding her she hadn't dreamed all of it.

_You had me at hello_.

…

**End Notes**: I had a lot of fun with this. Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions. Any improbable encounter for this pair that you might have in mind?


	3. Doctors Make The Worst Patients

**Warnings**: references to self-harm (though no self-harm actually takes place in the story); swear words.

1

Sara detested hospitals, and not in small part because it used to be the setting of her daily life, because she used to _love_ it, had loved even what most doctors (or in her case, interns) found irking. The smell of neatness and antiseptic that hovered in the air, plastic gloves going _smack_ as they were adjusted, and the ludicrous ambient whiteness – white walls, white blouses, white-faced patients. _What a silly, silly place_, you would be tempted to think, if its inmates weren't so grave. That had been the part Sara loved most – TV shows advertised hospitals as places where everyone was running and shouting, and everything a matter of life and death, but the truth, less sensational, was rather a slick tone of cool pragmatism. So and so swallowed too many meds? No no no, I explicitly said half a gram of codeine and no more – how much now? Ah. Well, treat him to a stomach pump and he'll be fine.

Of course, no one likes to be on the other side of that conversation and doctors certainly make the worst patients, no denying that. What could be more humiliating than going from white-blouse to patient-blue shirt, from standing with the patient's chart in your hands to sitting helpless on the bed, from the one giving commands to the one on the receiving end?

"Miss Tancredi, I'm going to have to ask you to –"

"You'll do no such thing. I know Meyers, and he'll make a botched mess of the whole thing – for starters, this cut needs nine stitches, not eight, and if you can't get me a competent doctor for the job I'll do it myself."

Better her own steady hand – it could remain steady past a considerable amount of drinks – than the one of her ex-fellow intern, who she remembered to leave the ugliest scars any of the residents had ever seen at Chicago Hospital.

The nurse she was currently talking to was also familiar, though she couldn't remember his name. Freakishly tall, so all the kids gaped at him when he first walked into the room, and a couple of years her junior; she remembered finding him passably cute when he'd asked her out for coffee after work. But his face was such an adorable shade of boyishness, she'd had to decline, for both their sakes – Sara ate boys like him for breakfast.

Now, sitting on a hospital bed, with a gaping wound on her arm spilling blood through her compressed fingers, she felt the balance of power between them hadn't shifted in his favor.

Though imperative, Sara's tone was free from the mood of anger that nurses fall prey to all too often. She'd done many bad things throughout her short-lived medical career (stealing drugs was about as bad as professional faults could get here) but shouting abuse at nurses didn't make the list.

"Could you find me Edison?" Sara asked.

"Off duty."

"Right. How about Molroy?"

"Sara," he sighed – annoyance visibly made him forget to address her as a patient. "You can't exactly pick and choose."

"Okay, okay. If you just give me a shot to numb the area, I'll –"

"No _way_ you're stitching yourself back up."

"I'm sober, Dan."

There'd been time for her to glance at his nametag while he was shaking his head in disbelief and embarrassment.

"That doesn't make any difference. You're not a doctor anymore."

The words sliced into her chest, right through the armor of casual indifference – _stupid girl, it shouldn't sting anymore_ – but the wounds of failure are ever sore, and much trickier to stitch back together.

"Just put yourself in my shoes, will you?"

She thought: _I wish_.

Oh, like the rest of the team, she'd feigned offense at being called a nurse, but she'd take that, right now, even that, rather than her current lot –

"You're really going to have me give it to you straight," he said, "no sugarcoating?"

"Sugarcoating's for wimps."

"A patient with a history of drug use comes in with a slit wrist, would you let her do her own stitches?"

"For Christ's sake, Dan, I _slipped_. If I wanted to off myself I'd go damn well better about it –"

Sara interrupted herself as a pair of her old colleagues dragged a portable bed into the room adjoining hers, whose demarcation was signaled only by a slim curtain (the sort that'd get stuck if you tried to draw it shut).

Sara kept her eyes down as they passed them by, wanted to spare them all the embarrassment – for her colleagues to have to improvise emotion, to achieve pity without condescension.

_I don't care, just keep walking, keep walking, we don't have to do this, you don't have to see me_.

Fortunately, they looked to be busy enough with their patient.

It was safe for Sara to focus back on her nurse. "See, that's exactly why I want a good scar. This shit stays like this – and you know how it'll look if Meyer handles it – every single person that looks at my arm is going to think I'm a walking suicide."

"We are _not_ debating this. Doctor Meyer will be there any minute, if you'll just –"

"Sir, don't try to move –"

The voice of the doctor in the next bed caught her attention, and Sara couldn't fight off the instant recognition.

Katie.

_Just my luck_.

The only one of her colleagues she genuinely liked, and liking people was important when you led a doctor's life, hundred-hour weeks, meals and sleep swept under the table when more urgent business arose. To be around people you liked made this tolerable, small gestures meant a lot – that someone would think to buy coffee for two in the cafeteria, even if both cups were drained before they reached you and all was left was the intention and an apologetic look; even just a tired smile, the reassurance of knowing someone shared your exhaustion, that they, too, were living in that dream-like black haze of sleep-deprived brains. You weren't insane. It wasn't just you.

And Katie had been so _nice_, when Sara's life fell off the rails, even after she'd long decided to stop caring about anything, or anyone, Katie had refused to return her indifference and, therefore, to accept it.

_I'll take you to rehab, Sara. I'll do it in a heartbeat. You won't be alone. You don't have to be._

Oh, they had been the wrong words, but well-meaning words, even as Sara had scorned them with the arrogance of those who are on the wicked ride of addiction, who don't live in the same dimension as normal people anymore.

Sara _wanted_ to be alone. Had felt far happier under the kiss of morphine than she had under the loving touch of any friend. Had been suddenly sick of her career – taking care of people – what did she owe them, why should she choose the more righteous path just to please them when that second road was bliss, crude pleasure, and utter, heavenly indifference to everything that had once mattered?

Sara's mind went into focus. If she was going to be honest here, impulsive decisions weren't her best ones, but what's a girl to do?

"Screw this," she said finally.

The rest happened pretty fast.

She got on her feet. The nurse Dan was too stunned with her sudden absurd course of action to try to stop her, even verbally.

At the very second she was turning to leave, Katie pulled the curtain covering the adjoining bed open and the two women were face to face.

Time crumbled in on itself and Sara felt nothing but a wave of raw shame swamp her system. To be a drunk, drug-addict mess holding your bleeding flesh together before a full-blown doctor, wearing all the attributes you used to wear, gloves and blouse and even the frown of concern, was bad enough.

But Katie was worse, a friend, not only a doctor, and Sara had no surviving hope that she could hide her shame from her.

Sara stiffened her own resolve. Her plan still held. There was a first-aid kit at her apartment, and if she grabbed a cab home fast enough she could just about get herself out of trouble.

Swallow a couple of painkillers and _voilà_, get the job done.

But fate had not intended for this to happen.

"Sara –"

"Let's not do this, all right? You can spare me the pep talk."

"Katie, _thanks_," from Dan-the-nurse, "can you help me? She wants to get out of here and stitch herself up _alone_."

"You bet your ass I do."

Sara used to hate vulgarity as much as any well-bred girl at her school. With time, you learned vulgarity scared off people, actually increased your chances of being left in peace.

Also, she was bitter in advance at the thought of sending her hospital bill to her father. Matters were bad enough as they were. She'd have to thank the idiot who'd thought well to call an ambulance while she was merely _resting_ – prone to fainting, yes, but definitely not comatose – and all that fuss about her arm. This was going to cost enough money without the stitches as the cherry on top.

Really.

She turned away from her former friend and started shooting for the door.

Her mind was made up, at least until a voice spoke from the hospital bed in the next room, no longer sheltered by the curtain.

"Wait."

It was the man's voice, not the imperative, that caused Sara to freeze on her way out, much as if she'd suffered a sudden spell of petrification.

She forgot to keep cradling her arm and keep pressure on the wound, and next thing she knew, blood was dripping down her fingertips, going _bleep-bleep-bleep_ on the floor, and she was turning round, half-convinced it had been a delusion.

But _no_.

Sitting on his own hospital, Michael Scofield was staring at her in astonishment, looking disheveled in his casual fancy clothes, bleeding slightly out of his forehead.

"Oh, you're kidding me."

Katie looked bemused now. "You two know each other?"

"_No_."

Anger was boiling thick in Sara's throat, but she resisted the fast-fading pleasure that would come out of cursing the universe.

Really, she wasn't interested in making a scene, now, in front of Michael, and tried not to visibly pout as she allowed herself to be docilely sat back on the bed.

"Well, well," Katie sighed.

Somehow, she did it without sounding condescending, which she could have done without even meaning to, considering the situation.

"Is it one of the cases where we talk about what a small world it is?"

"No."

Katie glanced back at the young man, who was looking unashamedly at Sara, as though she were a mirage he could hold in place by not letting her out of his sight.

"Will you let me stitch you up?" Katie said.

Sara shrugged. "Better you than Meyers."

"Great," she looked at Dan, "will you beep someone to fill in for me with Mr. Scofield?"

Sara resisted asking what was wrong with _Mr. Scofield_ – visibly, he needed to be checked for a concussion – and before she could think better of it, Katie tugged on the curtain that separated their hospital beds, and the handsome face of her always-stranger disappeared.

Unfortunately, it did nothing to help her relax, and Sara stared at her shoes while Katie gave her a shot to numb the area on her arm where blood had started oozing again.

Damn it. It really did look like a self-inflicted injury.

"I'm not trying to give you hell," Sara said, to draw attention away from it – or to think of something else than the fact that Michael Scofield was lying on the other side of that curtain, and her heart was hammering in her chest lest she should forget it. "Not just for the sake of it, I mean. I remember what it's like. I just didn't want –"

"To lose control. I remember, Sara."

Sara clenched her jaw.

It was hateful that Katie should act like she had known her that well, had known that the only way Sara could tolerate _not_ to be in control was when she shot morphine through her veins – in a way, that made her the captain of her own destruction. People don't normally destroy what looks like a pile of ruins. If she did it to herself, then she did control it – controlled even the way that control momentarily slipped through her loose grip.

"How'd that happen?"

"I tripped. And I happen to be sober just now, Katie. Really, it's just your regular case of a clumsy accident. They do happen."

"I never said they didn't."

"Then say what you mean."

Katie looked up at her, for the final time before she started stitching her up. In her eyes, there was the same kindness that had been there from the beginning. It wears out in most people, who start seeing you as a parasite, like drug addiction is a disease as contagious as leprosy. But not in Katie.

And, of course, Sara felt all the angrier toward the people who refused to reject her, when her own conduct should naturally lead them to.

"I don't mean to say anything more than I've already told you," Katie said. "Support gets boring when it's hammered in. You know where to find me."

Sara didn't answer.

Her shoes were still the most appropriate place to be looking.

"You're gonna tell me who the patient on the other side of that curtain is?"

"No."

Then Katie laughed, and Sara hated the genuine tone of that laughter, the possibilities it still flaunted.

"Jesus," she sighed. "Doctors really do make the worst patients."

"I'm not a doctor anymore."

Sara didn't look up from her feet. She didn't want to see the look on Katie's face that would say, _But you could be. You could be._

2

Sara didn't fool herself that she was going to go home having ignored Michael and altogether pretend that the absurd encounter hadn't happened. They were discharged around the same time. From what she gathered, he didn't have a concussion, and even with a scabbing forehead and the occasional drop of blood on the collar of his suit, he looked far less a mess than she did –

Of course.

Fate was on _his_ side, she didn't doubt.

When they were alone in the corridor, he cleared his throat, as if to shake the disbelief out of his voice which he hadn't managed to chase from his eyes.

"So –"

"If you comment on what a small world it is, I'll scream."

A chuckle crept on his lips but didn't make it to an audible release.

Goodness me, but he was handsome.

Sara thought there should be rules, _laws_, against such a blatant excess of male handsomeness.

"And if I offer to buy you coffee, will you punch me?"

She grunted. Brushed a hand through her hair, not because it wanted checking, but because it was safer not to look at him.

"I'd be rather uncivilized if I did. Wouldn't want to send you back to that room when you've just been checked out."

He didn't speak and, when she looked back at him, she realized he had offered his hand. A red rush swamped her cheeks.

Of course, she _could_ have just walked away without giving him a second thought, but what good would that have done, when the fading pleasure of asserting her control over the situation had evaporated? When she was lying alone in bed tonight, with the neighbor's cat, and that red scarf whose smell was still unfamiliar enough that she could fantasize it was his?

No. Just now, just for this moment of weakness, Sara didn't have the will to fight Michael, or the universe.

She put her hand in his.

Surprised, delighted, he beamed at her like a slice of sunshine.

"There's a coffeehouse just down the street –"

"I know it," she interrupted. "Let's get out of here."

3

Still on account of her fleeting weariness to fight what was obviously fate's plan, Sara didn't object to Michael paying for both their drinks – two coffees, both black, large, and unsweetened.

As they sat opposite each other, the steaming cups laid on a tray between them, she thought maybe there were more unpleasant people to have so absurdly pushed on your path.

That didn't make her any more amenable.

That day, Sara was simply tired – tired, and sad.

"You're all victories, aren't you," she said, daring to dive into her smoldering mug before he did.

In fact, he paid close to no attention to the drinks, or anything beside the invisible line between their eyes.

He hardly even seemed to hear her, but replied, "Am I?"

She trusted she didn't have to be more explicit. She was the one sitting there, looking like she'd just slit her own wrist, wasn't she?

It had only been one month since the bar.

The concentric circles which the universe was drawing around them were getting tighter, closer.

At this point, where was the sense in anything but utter honesty?

"I kept your scarf," she said.

"I told you to."

"Yes, but I didn't think I would." She stopped for another sip of coffee. The drink was still burning and she didn't want it, but she did want a _distraction_ – something to help deflect her attention from Michael's relentless gazing. "I thought I'd toss it in the trash when I got home, you know. I'm spiteful like that."

His eyes sparkled.

It flashed through her mind he didn't believe her.

That though she had done a good job making herself as hateful to him as possible, he simply did not buy her cruel act of indifference.

_Impossible_.

Nowhere but in great works of literature did men like that exist, men who knew your soul's inside colors when you showed only an impervious façade to the world.

That, or in cheap romance pictures.

The idea made her feel so queasy, she pushed back her mug of coffee in disgust.

"But you kept it," he said.

"A girl needs to keep warm."

Now, she was outright experimenting. He was trying to make her feel special. Maybe flirtatiousness would scare him away.

But he laughed like she was a theater performance he had paid good money to watch.

"What'd you want?" She said.

It annoyed her that she should be nervous, that she should feel like fate's _toy_, while he sat there all ease and pleasure, reaping the benefits.

"You act like I'm responsible," he said. "Like I keep _willing_ you on my path."

Sara shrugged evasively. He did feel responsible, to her eyes –

Those confident words he'd spoken, after their first meeting, as she was getting out of the elevator. _"I'll see you."_

If he wasn't responsible, then who was?

He was the only concrete individual she could blame for it, anyhow.

"All right," she pretended to meet him halfway. "What were you doing here?"

He sighed. "Misunderstanding. A bit of a hustle, drew a crowd, someone called an ambulance – I was fine from the beginning. All a big mistake. Much ado about nothing."

"You got into a fight?"

It was Sara's turn to laugh.

She was much better on the sarcastic laughing side of conversations; Michael Scofield looked as much the fighting type as her father looked like a rock n roll singer.

_Zero_.

Honestly, she'd been expecting something more along the lines of he'd saved a child's life by pushing her out of the way of a rolling car.

Maybe that was just because Sara's experience with mysterious men stopped with comic-book superheroes. Yes, Sara had been a superhero fan back in the days when it was _not_ fashionable or mainstream to be one. But of course, men in real life had nothing in common with those colorful-costumed vigilantes, as she had quickly realized.

The biggest lie of all sort of fiction was to make you think that the depths of the male mind were like dark unfathomable waters which only the purest, most crystal-bright woman could probe.

As a girl, Sara had patiently waited for the dumb boys she knew to turn into those brooding elusive men the books she read promised her. In adolescence, she had studied her male classmates with relentless rigor, wondered when the secret seed that made them so unintelligibly fascinating would finally bloom inside them, or if it already had.

Behind the surface of their pimply faces, she had tried to imagine the premade structures of mesmerizing manhood she still believed in, as she had believed Jesus, and as she had believed that she was only ever as good as her father said she was.

Not anymore.

No.

Sara was an unbeliever, now, if there ever was one.

That male myth was all a trick to hoodwink young women into docility and marriage, so the wheel could go on turning and crushing the newborn blossoms of dreams for freedom, emancipation. If women could only believe men were fascinating, their minds busy with subjects far beyond their comprehension, then they, the women, would be _subdued_.

It was all a trick, a magic trick.

Patriarchy, a trick.

Jesus too, maybe.

So Sara refused to _be_ fascinated by Michael, by these blue eyes that seemed so easily to command fascination.

He shrugged. "Not a fight, really. He pushed me. There was the sidewalk behind us, and I fell. It's the blood that made it look so much worse than it was."

"Who pushed you?"

Sara expected him to be evasive, but he said, "My brother."

She forced out a chuckle of that sarcastic laughter that never failed her. "The brother who ditched you last month outside the bar. The brother who thinks big corporations are evil."

He cocked his head to the side. "I have just the one."

"So, he pushes you around?"

"Not usually." With another shrug, he developed – it startled her that he wasn't ashamed of it, talking about a fight in which he obviously didn't get the upper hand, brother or not. "My brother isn't good with _emotions_. He has the hardest time expressing what he feels. Most of the time, it's not too much of a handicap, he gets along fine. But when something happens, pushes him out of his bounds – he snaps. I tell him all the time, if he learnt to know himself a little better, he might not be such a brute. Face your demons, tame your demons. You know?"

"You should write inspirational poetry."

But it didn't come out as biting as she'd wished. Really, she almost answered that _Maybe it's your brother I should be sitting with right now_, but she'd already said a version of this, when they were stuck in that elevator, and it would reveal too much about her.

"Well, anyway," he gave her a polite look, eyes blue as evening, "what took you here?"

It'd be so easy not to answer, not to reciprocate – she'd done nothing but try _not_ to meet him halfway since they'd met, but so far, it hadn't been working out for her so well. "Like you didn't hear me shout it on the rooftops. I slipped."

"Right."

"I really did."

She _really_ did.

Sighed at the defensiveness in her tone.

"What can you do. I'm a clumsy little beast."

He gazed at her as if to say she was the most incredible thing he'd ever looked at.

What had he called her, that day outside the bar?

_A question mark._

One who raised questions that didn't make any more sense than the mark.

"What _do_ you want?" She repeated.

"Why? You're feeling magnanimous?"

Now, if he started teasing, this wouldn't do at all.

Already, a warmth like hunger was catching down the pit of her stomach. It was that smile of his – and those eyes.

Eyes that held _no_ mystery, no lies.

In fact, he had been nothing but transparent about his desires since that first day in the elevator; so it couldn't be that she was curious, that she wanted to investigate.

And yet she _wanted_ to see him again.

"I'd love your phone number," he said, "and permission to call you. But you know that. And I have a feeling you aren't inclined to oblige me."

She seized the occasion to challenge him, "Well, maybe I will. Maybe, as we keep meeting when I don't expect it, if I do expect it, we'll stop. Maybe I'll give you my number and you'll lose it, get hit by a car – or by your brother – and you'll forget my name and won't be able to track down so much as my Facebook page. Maybe, if I give you my phone number, we'll never see each other again."

He smiled.

It really was the most shameless, outrageously attractive smile she had ever seen on any face.

"I like those chances."

She sighed, and tried not to smile, too –

For some reason, she thought Lisa was right. Doctors make the worst patients. And cynical, self-destructive women made the worst possible subjects to be tempted toward romance.

"Yeah," she said, "I'll bet."

…

**End Notes**: Sorry I took such a long time updating this story. Please tell me what you thought in the comment section. Take care!


	4. U-Turn

Warnings: This chapter contains implicit references to sexual abuse.

1

The first time Michael texted her after that, Sara got confirmation that, after all, her giving him her phone number had made little difference.

His text, she was glad to see, was nothing _like_ a text. For some reason, she liked to picture Michael as old-fashioned in ways that would include his unfamiliarity with text-language. There were no abbreviations in his message and, though short, it read like a handwritten note.

Dear Sara,

Hello again.

I thought a long time about what I should write to you. It seemed important that I got the place right – that I suggested to take you exactly where you wanted to go, so you would think my mind could follow yours in the right places.

It can't.

And it struck me I couldn't face you and pretend you're still anything but a mystery to me. So I thought I would play the only cards I have, and be honest.

Honestly, I can hardly go through with writing this, because I'm afraid you'll never write back, whatever I end up writing. Of course, I'd respect your wishes.

You know what I want. It's in your hands, Sara.

Just name the time and place. I'll be there if you want me.

He hadn't waited a couple of days, like some guys did, even when Sara could tell they were hooked on the taste of her skin harder even than on any of the drugs they happened to be doing.

The text from Michael made her phone vibrate in her hand the very night following the events at the hospital, just as she was getting ready for bed.

And, for a reason she was at a loss to explain, it filled her with a burning feeling of frustration – no. Anger.

She tossed the phone against the mattress, threw her shirt over her head, and slid inside the covers.

"Stupid."

Because he had somehow predicted the reaction she had more or less consciously resolved to adopt, when he would write –

The first few minutes after they had left each other outside the café – they had stayed in till closing hour – Sara hadn't regretted leaving him her phone number. Of course, trying to free yourself from the straightjacket that control has woven around your life, it always feels extraordinarily easy at first. By giving away this small piece of information, writing down her phone number on a paper napkin, Sara had felt bold, free, defiant, even. It was only step by step – taking a ride back home, how the inside of her flat brought back those old caging habits, that she started feeling unsure.

By exchanging that piece of paper, by giving him the chance to follow her into her home, to text or call anytime he wanted, what she had really given him was power.

And so, by the time that she was undressing to go to bed, Sara was already determined she would not write back, however the stranger tried to tempt an answer out of her.

His text speared through her bubble of anxiety and landed with a wet _plop_, the ever-recognizable sound of anticlimax.

Because instead of playing into her game, instead of making it necessary for her to push him away, he had taken a step back into the shadows, retreated behind the boundary with which she was comfortable.

He had given her back the power.

"Fine," she said. "Fine. He's just making it easy on me."

She pulled the covers over her shoulders and closed her eyes. In her mind, she was repeating that this was a good thing, reassuring, and it ought to help her sleep better. Nothing in her life was going to change. She'd given the stranger her phone number, one moment of weakness, but it was to have no consequences after all –

_(I'm afraid you'll never write back, whatever I end up writing)_

And he wasn't even going to make it so she had to change her phone number.

That's what it meant, wasn't it?

That he wasn't going to write, to pine after her like a pup pleading for the crumbs of her attention, to change from smoky stranger to a nuisance that made her phone vibrate every five minutes.

But the minutes whirled into hours and still, Sara wasn't sleeping, though she forbade herself to check the clock on her wall and face the undeniable proof of how much time had gone by.

"Stupid," she said again.

When it felt like she was saying it to herself rather than Michael's ghost, who by the way had taken to following her like a smiling angel-eyed shadow, she opened her eyes, and went on, making her target clearer.

"Stupid, smug, silly stranger."

That didn't help.

Plus, she had almost said sexy instead of silly.

Sara flipped over so she was lying on her side. What was wrong with her?

It wasn't like anything _serious_ had happened.

There were so many times when she had been used – drunken boyfriends pushing past her boundaries; better to let them have it their way. If they wouldn't take no for an answer, then she wouldn't say _no_, that way she'd control it, own it.

(_Stupid_)

So many times, and she felt _nothing_.

And now, after she'd taken a leap of faith, given her number to a near-stranger whom fate kept pushing into her life for some reason, and started to panic for relinquishing control, the man softly put the reins back into her hands, and she felt cheated? She felt –

"_Known_," she whispered.

The clock on her wall ticked pacifyingly.

Yes, that was it.

Like she was invincible, invisible, floating way beyond the reach of the real world, high on drugs and sex and alcohol, and somehow, he'd seen her.

How had he done that?

Without thinking, Sara grabbed her cell phone that had been lying next to her on the bed all the while that she'd been tossing and turning, and she texted,

You really want to make it hard on me, don't you?

That was a stupid move.

Someone suffering from insomnia should not be writing impulsive texts to anyone, let alone fate-appointed lovers.

Sara looked at the screen defiantly, refusing to wish the words back.

Anyway, he wasn't going to write.

The hour on her phone was in plain sight now, and she was certain nice men like Michael were asleep past three a.m. on week nights.

But he replied in just a minute.

No.

And, a second later.

I think you know what I want, Sara.

She clenched her teeth so hard pangs started down her jaw.

This was a mistake. Please don't write again.

She got to her feet, thinking she'd put the phone out of her range not to risk writing any more texts if the lack of sleep got worse. But just as she shoved it in the first drawer she came across in her chest of drawers, she looked up and saw the red scarf waiting patiently atop the piece of furniture.

Though she often took it to bed, she never left it there.

No.

It had to be a deliberate act, getting up to glide her fingers into the soft cashmere, so gentle to the touch, it was like sinking her hand into fine warm sand. She had to weigh the desire to press it to her cheek and clutch it to her as she slept against the pathetic image that the very act reflected onto her.

_Why do I run_, she wondered, _when I don't want to be chased? If not for the pleasure of denying him control over me, of teasing his patience, of toying with his feelings – if not for all that, then why?_

Why indeed.

Feeling like one huge pile of contradictions, she slammed open the drawer, retrieved her phone, and texted,

You said name the time and place.

Tonight.

She wrote the name of an all-night diner near her apartment.

As soon as you can make it.

2

Every bit of it went against Sara's usual MO.

That she would choose a place much closer to her than him, so that she would have to get there before him, to sit there alone, and wait, twirling the spoon in her tea.

That was the whole point.

_Ultimately, it'll strike me how ridiculous I'm being and I'll leave, before he even has the chance to see me._

But the minutes passed, and Sara didn't grow impatient or nervous. Or scared.

She waited.

Time around her had quieted to a soothing pace. The diner, empty but for her booth and the waitress washing cups behind the bar, had that special quality of predawn hours. Sara was used to sleepless nights, had grown fond of their bleak charm.

Life past four a.m. in Chicago was like a desolate picture, deep-blue, with a landscape but no people in it, or very few, and too dark for you to see their faces.

Sara forbade herself to look at the door, but she could not miss the telltale clinking of the bell and the, "Good morning," with which the waitress beamed at Michael. She probably didn't get nightly customers all that often, and especially ones as ridiculously handsome as Sara's stranger was.

Sara looked up.

His eyes latched on to hers without possible deferral, and she looked back, and was amazed that she had really allowed for this to happen, that she hadn't walked out of here while there was still time.

Politely, he asked for some coffee and walked toward Sara's booth. There was something too natural about his joining her, like they had known each other for years.

"Hello," he said.

"No."

"Sorry?"

She couldn't explain why, _Hello_ suddenly seemed to her the most annoying word in the English language. "We've just been writing to each other. We saw each other yesterday."

"Uh." He shrugged away the logic in her words. "Well, that's the thing with 'Hello', isn't it? It's daily renewable."

"I don't know why I asked you to come here."

"Me neither."

"I think I was going to stand you up."

He laughed. Obviously, he didn't agree.

"So, how's your arm?"

"Fine."

Really, it hurt like hell, because Sara wouldn't take any of the painkillers the doctors prescribed.

Yes, she was wayward in such ways as that.

Took pills when she didn't need them but wanted them, refused to answer her body's crying demands when it did need them.

_Stupid_.

But it was in such moments she knew for certain that she was in control – _she_, not anything else. I suppose you could say she was the sort of person who'd starve herself just to show her body who was boss – just to prove to herself that she could.

Suddenly, maybe because of how late it was, how tired she felt, it all seemed very vain to her. This endless tug of war she played with herself.

What good did it do?

Of course, she didn't keep on destroying herself because it did any _good_ to anyone. It was just that road was difficult to leave once you'd thrown yourself inside. At first, you kept riding it because you thought beyond the smoky horizon, dark wonders were hiding, the sort denied to good girls who kept to the angels' path. But even when you knew that was a lie, that there was nothing behind the fog but what your hungry mind put there, dreamed into being, well, you couldn't just veer off course.

The road to self-destruction was a carousel ride: easy to join, almost impossible to disembark.

And suddenly, Sara knew why she rejected the stranger, knew precisely what she saw in him, as he sat opposite her, thanking the waitress for his coffee, beaming so that a blush colored the poor woman's cheeks.

He was a U-turn.

What made his smile so charming was that it was shining with the promises of a sweet way out of the wild disaster that was her life.

Sara looked down at her tea when Michael looked back at her, after the waitress had gone.

"How much do you want to bet she's going to leave you her phone number on your bill?"

He chuckled. Warmed his hands around the coffee mug. "It's not her number I'm interested in, is it?"

"You know, you don't strike me as the sort of guy who likes to play games."

"I'm really not. It gets into my head. And I like to keep things simple, as far as relationships are concerned."

"Simple," she said.

That may be just the word to describe what she wasn't, if you had to pick only one.

"But I don't think we're playing games, Sara."

"Then what are we doing?"

He paused. It was his turn to look at his mug, and she seized her window to study him – the features of his face, how the long lashes curled over his blue gaze. There was no mystery there. He was veiling nothing from her. And yet she couldn't explain the violence of her sudden need to touch him, to put her palms against his neck and kiss the surprise right out of his lips. She could make out no logical origin for this desire – yet it existed, hungry, hungrier perhaps than anything she'd ever known.

And the crave for drugs could get pretty ravenous.

_Maybe it's that I want him for myself – not to feed that huge pit of destruction that burns everything it touches._

He looked up.

Sara realized what she had been thinking of while he wasn't looking and blushed.

"You believe in fate?" He shook his head, although she hadn't scoffed – hadn't laughed. "No, you wouldn't, I suppose. I don't either. But if anyone's playing a game here, Sara, I don't think it's you, or me. But I know I'd like to stop it – to stop wondering if I'm going to run into you, because chance wants it. I'd like to start seeing you because _we_ want it."

"We do."

She couldn't stop the words from slipping past her lips.

His eyes brightened in surprise, but he said nothing.

"What are you afraid of?" He asked.

Because she couldn't think of a witty reply, she said, "I don't know."

She couldn't say that leaving that hellish road was scarier than staying on it.

That it was only after you left it that you would really feel all the consequences of what had happened while you were on it.

On that road, pain was just pain. Strictly physical. It wasn't sadness or sorrow. There was no room for those.

When you had fallen to the bottom of a dark, craggy pit, wasn't it scarier to look up and see all the steps you would need to take to climb your way back up, what a long and hard way up it would be, instead of staying where you were, your mind blank, deserted, with only the occasional visit by the phantoms of your dead dreams?

Sara pushed the untouched mug of tea farther on the table.

They were looking into each other's eyes now, and she didn't want an excuse to deflect.

"Can I take you home?" She said.

It wasn't exactly surprise on his face.

Probably, her place was nearer, but she'd sooner not let him find out where she lived.

"Yes," he said.

She got to her feet. "You can take the bill," she said. "I'll wait outside."

He nodded, although there seemed for a moment the shadow of a doubt creeping into his brow – would she be there when he stepped out? Was she some kind of mirage that faded as you tried to grasp it?

_We'll see,_ she thought. _We'll see_.

_If he can touch me, he's real._

…

**AN**: Please share your thoughts in the comment section. Thanks for reading!


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